Summer School: History

Study History at our Summer School, with specialist access to the world-famous Mass Observation Archive. Browse our history Summer School modules below.

Browse our modules

The modules outlined below were offered for Summer School 2022 and are indicative of the type of modules that may be offered for 2023. Register your interest and we will be in touch once we have confirmed which modules will run next summer.

Session One

27 June - 15 July 2022

• British History from Regency to Radicalism

  Module code: IS442

  Unfortunately this module is not running for the 2022 Undergraduate Summer School. Check back here for details of the 2023 Undergraduate Summer School Programme later in the year.

  This course provides an overview of what has changed (and what has not) in British society and culture since the early nineteenth century. It does not attempt to be comprehensive, but rather uses historical debates to provide a context to questions which remain highly pertinent in Britain today.  Why does Britain, uniquely in Europe, still have a monarchy?  Why is social class still such an important aspect of how the British see themselves? Why have statues of nineteenth-century imperial figures become a source of such violent controversy since the emergence of the BLM? In what ways has ‘Brexit’ revealed Britain’s difficulty to confront its national decline over the last hundred years?  How might movements for racial and social justice in contemporary Britain work within a specific British radical paradigm?  All these questions can only be answered if we address the last two centuries of British history, confronting the longer-term patterns of continuity and change which are still playing out in a nation which struggles to confront both its past and its present.

  Specific topics covered include: aristocracy and monarchy since 1800; nineteenth and twentieth century movements for social change; advocates and critics of the British empire; explanations for British ‘decline’ in the twentieth century; gender and sexuality, 1800-1914; youth and popular culture since the 1930s.

  Learning outcomes:

  • To understand methods of historical study as a disciplinary approach
  • To understand the role of the British imaginary in historical forces since the 19th Century
  • To investigate the influence of events across historical periods
  • To develop powers of analysis, comprehension, and articulation commensurate with the study of society and the humanities

  Teaching method: Lectures, seminars and fieldtrips
  Assessment:  100% portfolio
  Contact hours: 40 hours 
  Credits: 15 Sussex Credits
  Level: 4

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